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The Kite Runner chapter summary
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boekverslag (kleine samenvatting en mening) van the kite runner
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The kite runner chapter summarySummary: Chapter 1
The period is December 2001, and our narrator, who tells his story in the first person, recalls an
event that occurred in 1975, when he was twelve years old and growing up in Afghanistan. He does
not say what happened, but says the event made him who he is. He follows this recollection by
telling us about a call he received last summer from a friend in Pakistan named Rahim Khan. Rahim
Khan asks our narrator, whose name is Amir, to come to Pakistan to see him. When Amir gets off the
phone, he takes a walk through San Francisco, where he lives now. He notices kites flying, and thinks
of his past, including his friend Hassan, a boy with a cleft lip whom he calls a kite runner.
Summary: Chapter 2
As children, Amir and Hassan would climb trees and use mirrors to reflect sunlight into a neighbor’s
window, or they would shoot walnuts at the neighbor’s dog with a slingshot. These were Amir’s
ideas, but Hassan never blamed Amir if they were caught. Amir lived with his father, Baba, in a lavish
home in Kabul. Meanwhile, Hassan and his father, Ali, lived in a small mud hut on the grounds of
Baba’s estate, and Ali worked as Baba’s servant. Neither Amir nor Hassan had a mother. Amir’s died
giving birth to him, and Hassan’s ran away after having him. One day while the boys are walking, a
soldier says to Hassan that he once had sex with Hassan’s mother, Sanaubar. Sanaubar and Ali were
an unlikely match. Ali was a devout reader of the Koran, the bottom half of his face was paralyzed,
and polio destroyed the muscle in his right leg, giving him a severe limp. Sanaubar was nineteen
years younger than Ali, beautiful, and reputedly immoral. Most people thought the marriage was
arranged by Sanaubar’s father as a way to restore honor to his family. Sanaubar openly detested Ali’s
physical appearance. Five days after Hassan was born, she ran away with a group of traveling
performers.
The soldier refers to Hassan as a Hazara, which we learn is a persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan.
The Hazaras originally came from further east in Asia, and their features are more Asian than Arabic.
Hassan’s parents were Hazara as well. Amir and Baba, on the other hand, are Pashtun. Once, while
looking through history books, Amir discovered information on the Hazara. They had an uprising
during the nineteenth century, but it was brutally suppressed by the Pashtuns. The book mentions
some of the derogatory names they are called, including mice-eating and flat-nosed, and says part of
the reason for the animosity is because the Hazara are Shia Muslim while the Pashtuns are Sunni
Muslim.
1
, The kite runner chapter summary
Summary: Chapter 3
Amir mixes his memories of Baba in with this information. Baba was a large man, six feet and five
inches tall with a thick beard and wild, curly hair. According to one story, he even wrestled a bear
once. Baba did all the things people said he could not do. Though he had no training as an architect,
he designed and built an orphanage. Though people said he had no business sense, he became one
of the most successful businessmen in the city. Though nobody thought he would marry well because
he wasn’t from a prominent family, he married Amir’s mother, Sofia Akrami, a beautiful, intelligent
woman who came from a royal bloodline. Baba also has his own strong moral sense. While Baba
pours himself a glass of whiskey, Amir tells him that a religious teacher at his school, Mullah Fatiullah
Khan, says it is sinful for Muslims to drink alcohol. Baba tells him that there is only one sin: theft.
Every other sin is a variation of theft. Murdering a man, for instance, is stealing his life. He calls
Mullah Fatiullah Khan and men like him idiots.
Amir tries to please Baba by being more like him but rarely feels he is successful. He also admits to
feeling responsible for his mother’s death. Since Baba likes soccer, Amir tries to like it as well, albeit
unsuccessfully. What Amir is good at is poetry and reading. But he worries his father does not see
these as manly pursuits. When he and Baba went to see a match of buzkashi, a popular game in
Afghanistan in which a rider must put an animal carcass in a scoring circle while other riders try to
take it from him, a rider was trampled after falling from his horse. Amir cried, and Baba could barely
hide his disdain for the boy. Amir later overhears Baba talking to his business associate, Rahim Khan,
the man that later calls Amir from Pakistan. Baba says Amir is not like other boys, and he worries that
if Amir can’t stand up for himself as a child, he will not be able to do so as an adult.
Summary: Chapter 4
The story jumps back in time to 1933, the year Baba is born and Zahir Shah becomes king of
Afghanistan. Around the same time, two young men who are driving while drunk and high hit and kill
Ali’s parents. Amir’s grandfather takes the young Ali in, and Ali and Baba grow up together. Baba,
however, never calls Ali his friend. Similarly, because of their ethnic and religious differences, Amir
says as a child he never thought of Hassan as a friend. Even so, Amir’s youth seems to him like a long
stretch of playing games with Hassan. But while Amir would wake up in the morning and go to
school, Hassan would clean the house and get groceries. Amir often read to Hassan, who was
illiterate. Their favorite story was “Rostam and Sohrab,” in which Rostam fatally wounds Sohrab in
battle and then finds out Sohrab is his lost son.
During one reading session under their favorite pomegranate tree, Amir begins to make up his own
story while he is reading to Hassan. Hassan says it is one of the best stories Amir has read. That night,
Amir writes his first short story, about a man whose tears turn to pearls. The man finds new ways to
make himself sad so he can cry and become richer, until the story ends with him sitting atop a mound
of pearls, sobbing over the wife he has stabbed. Amir tries to show Baba the story while Baba is
speaking with Rahim Khan, but Baba does not pay much attention. Rahim Khan takes the story
instead. When Rahim Khan leaves later than night, he gives Amir a note. In the note, he tells Amir he
has a great talent. Amir goes to where Hassan sleeps and wakes him so he can read him the story.
When Amir has finished, Hassan tells him the story is terrific. He has only one question: why didn’t
the man make himself cry with onions? Amir is annoyed he didn’t think of it himself and has a nasty
thought about Hassan being a Hazara, though he says nothing.
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